In part 1 of Henry's story, we saw how a moment in the company of Mona Lisa sparked a flash of inspiration that led to some research which resulted in a dream…

It's 1999, the human population of the world surpasses six billion, the number of Internet users worldwide has just reached 150 million, and the EURO currency is adopted by an important number of European countries; SpongeBob SquarePants premieres on Nickelodeon and The Matrix, The Sixth Sense and Star Wars: Episode I are released; Barbie Doll turns forty and the world is getting ready for the year 2000 by running tests for the millennium bug; My Space is officially released while Bluetooth is announced, and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Christina Aguilera take over the radio. And while these capture the world's attention, ProZ.com makes its first appearance as a website for freelancers in April, re-vamped in August as a translation-specific web portal.

On Friday, August 30th, we met at a pancake cafe & diner in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina,to celebrate ProZ.com’s 20th anniversary. It was the first ProZ.com powwow for many of us, including the newly added staff members from the Argentinian team. We ended up being forty people --taking up more tables than planned-- and we had a lot of fun!

On Wednesday 4th September 2019, twelve translators (one of whom arrived after this photo and one of whom was holding the camera!) met in the outdoor pergola of the fine Vista Corona restaurant in Barceloneta, the leisure and marina area of Barcelona, in one of the ProZ.com 20th anniversary powwows!

Common Sense Advisory (CSA), in cooperation with Translators without Borders (TwB) and ProZ.com, is conducting a large-scale survey on translators and interpreters, to research challenges being faced and changes being made by today's professionals. Please consider taking some time to respond to this survey-- your input will be greatly appreciated. Results of this research will be made available to ProZ.com members.

The ProZ.com team is multicultural, multilingual, and made up of talented individuals in different parts of the world who are passionate about helping translation industry professionals to achieve business success. 

Part three of this report was posted at https://go.proz.com/blog/human-response-to-a-changing-industry:-part-3

Part two of this report was posted at https://go.proz.com/blog/human-response-to-a-changing-industry:-part-2

Human response

How are the puny humans faring in all of this? How are they adapting? There are three main camps:

by Henry Dotterer and Jared Tabor, ProZ.com

Intro

In this report, we will take a look at some of the changes that have been introduced into the language services industry over the past years, and at how the humans in that industry, specifically translators and interpreters, are reacting and adapting to those changes.

But first, we want you to meet someone.

André Lisboa is an English - Portuguese translator based in Brazil. He is a ProZ.com member, and member of the Certified PRO Network (CPN). He has been working in the translation industry for over 25 years now, and has recently published a book, How to Become a Successful International Translator. In the book, he discusses some translation basics like resources and CAT tools, and also goes into detail on marketing, building a portfolio, time and resource management, and other subjects. The English edition of the book includes an interview with Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes Translations, on the translation industry in general, and what they look for when they hire new linguists.

I interviewed André about How to Become a Successful International Translator, and his thoughts on translation and the industry:

Founded in 1979, The National Center for Interpretation (NCI) is a research and outreach unit at the University of Arizona located in Tucson, Arizona. From its inception, the unit was charged with promoting intercultural communication and social justice for language minorities, mainly through training and testing for interpreters and translators. A corollary objective was that of advancing the professionalism of the field. Our previous director and founder, Dr. Roseann Gonzalez, provided the groundbreaking work that lead to the establishment of the process to assess and certify federal court interpreters in Spanish, Navajo, and Haitian Creole. Her work set the standard for interpreter testing for the entire profession of court interpreting, and helped to expand interpreter testing and training across many regions and professional fields in the USA. In 1983, Dr. Gonzalez founded the then 3-week Summer Court Institute for Court Interpretation. She also created the Medical Interpreter Training Institute and both institutes’ curricula continue to be valid -- and even considered a gold standard by some-- in today’s ever-changing world of interpreting.

Have you done post-editing work? Have your clients approached you about it? Have machine translation and post-editing changed the way you work, or the way you present your services to clients? There is a short survey running on the topic. If you have a few minutes, your input would be greatly appreciated:

Please share your experiences in this 18-question survey »

Hi translators and interpreters.

There have been significant changes in translation and interpreting in recent years. How are you, as a freelancer, adapting?